4 ms·

Maybe I'm weird, but I feel like range anxiety is overblown. Most people don't go that far in a day and while recharging isn't instant, it's getting quite fast.

by mdasen 5y ago

Maybe I'm weird, but I feel like range anxiety is overblown. Most people don't go that far in a day and while recharging isn't instant, it's getting quite fast. Back in the day, it was easy to be bored. That was so little to distract you while waiting. Now, I have a smartphone with me all the time. Even when I'm home, half the time I'm on my smartphone by choice. Ok, that's an exaggeration, but it's so much easier to wait half an hour. Get a drink and a snack, derp around on my phone, etc. If I'm doing Boston -> DC via Tesla Model 3 Long Range, it'll add two stops for 20 minutes and 25 minutes. However, I'm going to have to stop for gas along the way at least once so the 45 minute penalty should maybe be a 30 minute penalty. Realistically, it isn't a bad thing to stop a couple times, get drinks/snacks, stretch my legs, etc. It feels like it's a 5% penalty which just doesn't seem significant for something people rarely do. I think some of it is the psychology that a 20 minute stop feels like a real stop while a 5 minute stop doesn't feel like a real stop. Even if you spend 10 minutes in the convenience shop or get lunch, that's your "choice" rather than the car's need. A lot of gas stops are longer than 5 minutes on road trips. I think people buy cars for things they almost never do - and have a weird hate of themselves if their car can't accommodate something. I had a friend whose car couldn't fit a piece of furniture and he had to pay $100 to have it delivered. He said that he hated himself for not buying the larger (and $5,000 more expensive) vehicle he was also considering the three times this had happened. In my mind, that's not something to regret. You've come out $4,700 ahead! Yes, sometimes your car won't accommodate everything and that's ok. Maybe your car will need 5% more time to do Boston to DC, but that's not a big deal in your life.

mlac 5y ago
I agree with your last point. I don’t own a truck because I can rent an 8 foot bed truck at uhaul for <$100 with little notice. It’s been fine. But range “anxiety” (concern?) has stopped me from buying an electric car so far (though the next one will be). Your first example doesn’t account for variance, charging where you wind up, and fluctuations in demand. Most people travel on busy travel days. So this could be a problem if I’m going to the beach on a Saturday. Suddenly I’m in line behind 3 other cars that drove the same distance to minimize the number of charges they need between my city and the beach. So I now need to wait 1 hour before I can start charging, and I don’t have enough fuel to get to another charger. Now I arrive at the beach house and I either can only slow charge or need to find a charger. I can also go 500 miles on a tank of gas. That’s one trip without stopping (realistically 250 miles over 3.5 hours of highway driving). That’s right on the edge of charging, and then it’s making a 3.5 hour trip a 4 hour trip, which makes a difference. That’s an hour out of the weekend.
- cogman10 5y ago
  > Most people travel on busy travel days. So this could be a problem if I’m going to the beach on a Saturday. In my experience, I've only had to wait to charge once. There are generally more than enough chargers for weekends. It's holidays you have to watch out for. > Now I arrive at the beach house and I either can only slow charge or need to find a charger. 24 hours of charging will fill up most EV to 100%. Most EV owners would say "Yeah, slow charge at the beach house, why look for a fast charger?". You probably aren't doing anything at night and even if that's the only time you slow charge, 16 hours would give you a pretty decent chunk of range.
  - mlac 5y ago
    Agreed, but I think it’s going to be a mess in the next couple years when ford starts shipping the lightning. There are going to be way more trucks than chargers to handle them for long trips. Practically that doesn’t make a difference (and I’d probably take my gas vehicle for long road trips). And slow charging works at the vacation spot, unless you’re at a condo / parking garage without power outlets. It’s just enough inconvenience (with fairly significant consequences if you run out of charge [half day of vacation waster]) to make it less practical right now as a single car solution.
    - cogman10 5y ago
      > Agreed, but I think it’s going to be a mess in the next couple years when ford starts shipping the lightning. Agreed there. The lightning is going to sell like hotcakes. I only hope ford starts investing in charge networks. This won't really affect tesla's, but it will put a lot of strain on these smaller networks. > And slow charging works at the vacation spot, unless you’re at a condo / parking garage without power outlets. It’s just enough inconvenience (with fairly significant consequences if you run out of charge [half day of vacation waster]) to make it less practical right now as a single car solution. Personally, I plan my lodging around EV chargers. Though, I'd be the first to say that sometimes there's not enough chargers for everyone that wants to charge. My hope is that as time goes on, we'll see bigger expansion of L2 chargers. It's something that I believe more EV adoption will drive more L2 deployment.
dan-robertson 5y ago
I think psychology, cars in the US are connected with independence and liberty in the US rather than just utility. If your car fails to let you be independent (because it can’t do something you only need three times in your life) then maybe that is actually a big failure of its “promise” to give you independence and personal liberty and that therefore decreases your perception of the value of the car by a lot. I realise this whole argument for pricing the car is ridiculous from a rational standpoint but I think it matters more how it feels to ordinary Americans.
wjp3 5y ago
I bought a Model Y last year, in spite of my range anxiety. My first road trip alleviated that concern for me. Range anxiety is real, though. While I think the need for a "super long range" model isn't necessarily needed, it can go a long way to solving the short-term dilemma in consumer mindsets.
mc32 5y ago
The problem isn’t interurban driving. It’s driving to the countryside. Drive to Grass Valley for a weekend and then to the countryside from there or drive to lake Sebago and drive to the countryside from there. That’s what people in metro areas do for their weekend jaunts. Go to a nice place far from the urban area then want to explore the countryside surrounds there. There may be areas where that works but I think the anxiety for that is reasonable.
- cogman10 5y ago
  It may surprise you to learn this, but there's a fast charger in Grass Valley. [1] It's really pretty stunning how many fast chargers are popping up in rural locations. They are usually 50kW chargers, but still, that will get you to where you need to go in an hour or 2 (if you need to). On the other hand, if you are spending a weekend there, you can often slow charge at wherever you are staying. A weekend is more than enough time to get a full battery, even at 120V. [1] https://www.plugshare.com/directory/us/california/grass-valley https://www.plugshare.com/directory/us/california/grass-vall...
cogman10 5y ago
I agree with you, but I'll throw in a few things on why I still want longer range cars (I currently own a 2018 long range model 3). The first big thing is shorter stops. A 500 mile range battery can charge at a higher rate for longer than a lower range battery. Where you might need to go up to 90% to get to the next charger, a bigger battery means that you actually only need to hit 60 or 70% in order to get to that next stop. That means a longer time charging at 250kW which ultimately gets you further for the same time spent. Now, for total trip time, maybe this matters less. However, for a charging infrastructure it means that you are cycling through cars more frequently. That means during holidays you have less cars that need to charge and when they do charge they need to charge for a shorter period of time, relieving congestion. The other thing, and this may just be my neck of the woods, is tesla really needs to do a better job at charger placement. In the west, a lot of the chargers are in bad spots. They are often in hotel parking lots or general mall spots. This means that while at a gas station you might walk out, use the restroom or grab a snack, at a lot of these charge locations you are stuck in the car. You need to make a seperate stop to do all that. We need more gas stations installing chargers. But if they do that, they'll probably want to do CCS and not Tesla... which means tesla needs to come out with a CCS1 adapter for the US. None of this has made road trips in the Tesla terrible. I've done a 2000 mile trip and it really wasn't all that bad. That said, I'll certainly opt in for a larger battery pack when they are available.
grogenaut 5y ago
Range gives you options. My gas cars all have 400+ mile ranges. I've been in several places in the last 3 years with 130+ miles between (gas) services. That's scary even when the range estimator is saying "you're cool". I just drove from STL -> Chicago -> Yellowstone -> Seattle. Range helps a lot since we multiple time deviated from the plan (Rushmore to devils tower). We would have had to be very specific with a lower range electric. Also our options for lodging would have been much more greatly restricted and we would issues have missed several cool small towns. And we'd have had to, while exhausted, charge the car at the end of a long day. To get real detailed: Looking at their trip planner, and ignoring you can't charge up in most of yellowstone, CHI -> Rushmore -> Devils Tower -> Lusk -> Canyon Village is 390 minutes / 6.5 hours charging. Due to the limited number of stops in the trip planner, the remainder of the trip (which assumes a full charge at the start) would be another 110 minutes, (~2 hours) of charging. For a grand total of probably 9 hours of charging, or a full day of driving over that trip. I filled up 8 times on the trip, call it 10 minutes each, so 80 minutes. So call it 7 hours (420 minutes). That's 560 miles of drive time spent charging, which is basically a full day over that trip. I did see several teslas in the park, but I'm guessing they were coming in and out from Jackson / Gardier / West. We did 250 miles a day in the park easy and we stayed in the park. Also exhausted at the end of each day. Note I'm not a charging expert nor hyper optimizer so you may be able to do better but I had trouble just booking the hotels for this trip due to covid's impacts on everything. My buddy drives for work as an engineering sales person. They go to factories from North Cali to Vancouver BC, and out to MT. Drives from Portland, OR to the UP, Michigan for fun 4 times a year. Those trips would be a PITA with a standard low range EV. A year ago I went from Tuscon -> Ozarks, MO -> STL -> Chicago. IIRC the Tesla trip planner had us doing 7+ hours at the charger. We did the trip in 2 days in a gas car and went all over the place. In 2019 we went from Cairns to Brisbane over 13 days, which is about 1100 miles, even less options. In 2018 we did Sea -> Crater Lake -> Crescent City -> Tahoe -> Yosemite -> CV -> LA -> and then the 1 on the coast up back up to Seattle. 3800 massive miles, 82 hours driving. I can't even imagine what planning that trip with a low range EV would look like. Sure I don't do it all the time but I'm averaging one large (2500mi+) road trip every year or so. And this doesn't even consider things like ski trips where you're blowing a whole day if you can't get a charge/refill on time. There are a lot of EVs in the Seattle area, that means a lot of people using the chargers in remote areas and you're already exhausted and dealing with tired kids. I'm personally waiting on a suv-ish ev with >500 mile range. And even then my cars are all in great shape, so it'll be a while before I buy one.
prostoalex 5y ago
It's more of charging availability anxiety. Typical EV user case involves a homeowner with a charger in the garage. Worse comes to worst, you can always plug the car overnight. But someone like a student, who lives in a rental, might experience difficulty keeping their car consistently charged. Even when public chargers are nominally available, they might be inoperable, used by others, or just taken up by a non-EV taking up a convenient parking spot (which, according to EV owner groups, happens frequently).

by mdasen 5y ago

mlac 5y ago

I agree with your last point. I don’t own a truck because I can rent an 8 foot bed truck at uhaul for <$100 with little notice. It’s been fine. But range “anxiety” (concern?) has stopped me from buying an electric car so far (though the next one will be). Your first example doesn’t account for variance, charging where you wind up, and fluctuations in demand. Most people travel on busy travel days. So this could be a problem if I’m going to the beach on a Saturday. Suddenly I’m in line behind 3 other cars that drove the same distance to minimize the number of charges they need between my city and the beach. So I now need to wait 1 hour before I can start charging, and I don’t have enough fuel to get to another charger. Now I arrive at the beach house and I either can only slow charge or need to find a charger. I can also go 500 miles on a tank of gas. That’s one trip without stopping (realistically 250 miles over 3.5 hours of highway driving). That’s right on the edge of charging, and then it’s making a 3.5 hour trip a 4 hour trip, which makes a difference. That’s an hour out of the weekend.

cogman10 5y ago
> Most people travel on busy travel days. So this could be a problem if I’m going to the beach on a Saturday. In my experience, I've only had to wait to charge once. There are generally more than enough chargers for weekends. It's holidays you have to watch out for. > Now I arrive at the beach house and I either can only slow charge or need to find a charger. 24 hours of charging will fill up most EV to 100%. Most EV owners would say "Yeah, slow charge at the beach house, why look for a fast charger?". You probably aren't doing anything at night and even if that's the only time you slow charge, 16 hours would give you a pretty decent chunk of range.
- mlac 5y ago
  Agreed, but I think it’s going to be a mess in the next couple years when ford starts shipping the lightning. There are going to be way more trucks than chargers to handle them for long trips. Practically that doesn’t make a difference (and I’d probably take my gas vehicle for long road trips). And slow charging works at the vacation spot, unless you’re at a condo / parking garage without power outlets. It’s just enough inconvenience (with fairly significant consequences if you run out of charge [half day of vacation waster]) to make it less practical right now as a single car solution.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    > Agreed, but I think it’s going to be a mess in the next couple years when ford starts shipping the lightning. Agreed there. The lightning is going to sell like hotcakes. I only hope ford starts investing in charge networks. This won't really affect tesla's, but it will put a lot of strain on these smaller networks. > And slow charging works at the vacation spot, unless you’re at a condo / parking garage without power outlets. It’s just enough inconvenience (with fairly significant consequences if you run out of charge [half day of vacation waster]) to make it less practical right now as a single car solution. Personally, I plan my lodging around EV chargers. Though, I'd be the first to say that sometimes there's not enough chargers for everyone that wants to charge. My hope is that as time goes on, we'll see bigger expansion of L2 chargers. It's something that I believe more EV adoption will drive more L2 deployment.

dan-robertson 5y ago

I think psychology, cars in the US are connected with independence and liberty in the US rather than just utility. If your car fails to let you be independent (because it can’t do something you only need three times in your life) then maybe that is actually a big failure of its “promise” to give you independence and personal liberty and that therefore decreases your perception of the value of the car by a lot. I realise this whole argument for pricing the car is ridiculous from a rational standpoint but I think it matters more how it feels to ordinary Americans.

wjp3 5y ago

I bought a Model Y last year, in spite of my range anxiety. My first road trip alleviated that concern for me. Range anxiety is real, though. While I think the need for a "super long range" model isn't necessarily needed, it can go a long way to solving the short-term dilemma in consumer mindsets.

mc32 5y ago

The problem isn’t interurban driving. It’s driving to the countryside. Drive to Grass Valley for a weekend and then to the countryside from there or drive to lake Sebago and drive to the countryside from there. That’s what people in metro areas do for their weekend jaunts. Go to a nice place far from the urban area then want to explore the countryside surrounds there. There may be areas where that works but I think the anxiety for that is reasonable.

cogman10 5y ago
It may surprise you to learn this, but there's a fast charger in Grass Valley. [1] It's really pretty stunning how many fast chargers are popping up in rural locations. They are usually 50kW chargers, but still, that will get you to where you need to go in an hour or 2 (if you need to). On the other hand, if you are spending a weekend there, you can often slow charge at wherever you are staying. A weekend is more than enough time to get a full battery, even at 120V. [1] https://www.plugshare.com/directory/us/california/grass-valley https://www.plugshare.com/directory/us/california/grass-vall...

cogman10 5y ago

I agree with you, but I'll throw in a few things on why I still want longer range cars (I currently own a 2018 long range model 3). The first big thing is shorter stops. A 500 mile range battery can charge at a higher rate for longer than a lower range battery. Where you might need to go up to 90% to get to the next charger, a bigger battery means that you actually only need to hit 60 or 70% in order to get to that next stop. That means a longer time charging at 250kW which ultimately gets you further for the same time spent. Now, for total trip time, maybe this matters less. However, for a charging infrastructure it means that you are cycling through cars more frequently. That means during holidays you have less cars that need to charge and when they do charge they need to charge for a shorter period of time, relieving congestion. The other thing, and this may just be my neck of the woods, is tesla really needs to do a better job at charger placement. In the west, a lot of the chargers are in bad spots. They are often in hotel parking lots or general mall spots. This means that while at a gas station you might walk out, use the restroom or grab a snack, at a lot of these charge locations you are stuck in the car. You need to make a seperate stop to do all that. We need more gas stations installing chargers. But if they do that, they'll probably want to do CCS and not Tesla... which means tesla needs to come out with a CCS1 adapter for the US. None of this has made road trips in the Tesla terrible. I've done a 2000 mile trip and it really wasn't all that bad. That said, I'll certainly opt in for a larger battery pack when they are available.

grogenaut 5y ago

Range gives you options. My gas cars all have 400+ mile ranges. I've been in several places in the last 3 years with 130+ miles between (gas) services. That's scary even when the range estimator is saying "you're cool". I just drove from STL -> Chicago -> Yellowstone -> Seattle. Range helps a lot since we multiple time deviated from the plan (Rushmore to devils tower). We would have had to be very specific with a lower range electric. Also our options for lodging would have been much more greatly restricted and we would issues have missed several cool small towns. And we'd have had to, while exhausted, charge the car at the end of a long day. To get real detailed: Looking at their trip planner, and ignoring you can't charge up in most of yellowstone, CHI -> Rushmore -> Devils Tower -> Lusk -> Canyon Village is 390 minutes / 6.5 hours charging. Due to the limited number of stops in the trip planner, the remainder of the trip (which assumes a full charge at the start) would be another 110 minutes, (~2 hours) of charging. For a grand total of probably 9 hours of charging, or a full day of driving over that trip. I filled up 8 times on the trip, call it 10 minutes each, so 80 minutes. So call it 7 hours (420 minutes). That's 560 miles of drive time spent charging, which is basically a full day over that trip. I did see several teslas in the park, but I'm guessing they were coming in and out from Jackson / Gardier / West. We did 250 miles a day in the park easy and we stayed in the park. Also exhausted at the end of each day. Note I'm not a charging expert nor hyper optimizer so you may be able to do better but I had trouble just booking the hotels for this trip due to covid's impacts on everything. My buddy drives for work as an engineering sales person. They go to factories from North Cali to Vancouver BC, and out to MT. Drives from Portland, OR to the UP, Michigan for fun 4 times a year. Those trips would be a PITA with a standard low range EV. A year ago I went from Tuscon -> Ozarks, MO -> STL -> Chicago. IIRC the Tesla trip planner had us doing 7+ hours at the charger. We did the trip in 2 days in a gas car and went all over the place. In 2019 we went from Cairns to Brisbane over 13 days, which is about 1100 miles, even less options. In 2018 we did Sea -> Crater Lake -> Crescent City -> Tahoe -> Yosemite -> CV -> LA -> and then the 1 on the coast up back up to Seattle. 3800 massive miles, 82 hours driving. I can't even imagine what planning that trip with a low range EV would look like. Sure I don't do it all the time but I'm averaging one large (2500mi+) road trip every year or so. And this doesn't even consider things like ski trips where you're blowing a whole day if you can't get a charge/refill on time. There are a lot of EVs in the Seattle area, that means a lot of people using the chargers in remote areas and you're already exhausted and dealing with tired kids. I'm personally waiting on a suv-ish ev with >500 mile range. And even then my cars are all in great shape, so it'll be a while before I buy one.

prostoalex 5y ago

It's more of charging availability anxiety. Typical EV user case involves a homeowner with a charger in the garage. Worse comes to worst, you can always plug the car overnight. But someone like a student, who lives in a rental, might experience difficulty keeping their car consistently charged. Even when public chargers are nominally available, they might be inoperable, used by others, or just taken up by a non-EV taking up a convenient parking spot (which, according to EV owner groups, happens frequently).